Monday, November 20, 2006

pre-Thanksgiving weekend activities

I haven't posted a weekend wrap-up lately, though I've been keeping busy. Most of the time my weekends consist of waking up around 10 AM on Saturday, watching an EPL game on FOX Soccer Network, then figuring out what to do with the rest of my day. Sundays are roughly the same, except that on Sunday nights I go to a friend's apartment to watch "The Amazing Race." This weekend wasn't that different, but I did make some changes.

On Saturday afternoon I went to Mo's Caribbean to watch the Ohio State-Michigan game with some friends, both partisan and non-. Mo's has a frat-boy feel to it, and just about everyone there had some stake in the game, so whenever either team scored the place erupted in cheers and drunken renditions of "Hail To The Victors" or the OSU fight song. The game was as entertaining as I'd hoped, and the rowdy atmosphere made for a fun viewing experience, definitely better than watching it at home. James couldn't see the game, so I sent him updates by text message in the 2nd half. I have to get a better deal on text messages in my next cell phone plan, because I'm too cheap to pay 10 cents a message.

After the game I ate a quick dinner at a pizza joint and hopped on the subway to Williamsburg to catch up with some friends from work who were wrapping up an all-day pub crawl. The first stop was Barcade, a bar with an assortment of 1980s-era arcade games and at least 20 microbrews on tap. After a few drinks there, the remainder of the pub crawl group moved on to The Levee to wrap up. I ended up getting home around 2 AM, thankfully not so drunk as to be hung over on Sunday.

On Sunday morning another friend from work picked me up in his SUV and we drove out to Ikea so I could pick up some new furniture. Last week I wrote about my old bookcase nearly falling over on me. I'd looked around my neighborhood at some other bookcase and dresser options, but I hadn't seen anything in my price range or that I really preferred over something from Ikea. My friend agreed to give me a ride and save me the delivery charge, and I promised we'd go early so he could have the rest of his day for his own plans. I bought a new six-drawer dresser for my bedroom, a new bookcase, a second CD tower for my living room, and a new floor lamp for the living room and a desk lamp for my office. We got back from the store at 12:30, and I spent the rest of my afternoon assembling the bookcase, lamp, and dresser. I was going to wait until my friends came over on Thursday for Thanksgiving to move the old bookcase to the trash, but when I noticed it had the same hex bolts as the Ikea furniture I took it apart and threw it out in pieces. It was in surprisingly decent shape after all, and I probably could have moved some other things around and kept it. But since it didn't match anything else in my apartment and it was so old I decided to trash it anyway. And after I'd re-shelved all my books I didn't need a second bookcase.

I took some photos of the mess I made yesterday, so check them out in this Flickr set. Note the special appearance by Vladi in one of the photos.